Most Tribes in Anbar Agree To Unite Against Insurgents

Published: September 18, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

Nearly all the tribes from Iraq's volatile Sunni-dominated Anbar Province have agreed to join forces and fight Al Qaeda insurgents and other foreign-backed ''terrorists,'' an influential tribal leader said Sunday. Iraqi government leaders encouraged the movement.

Twenty-five of about 31 tribes in Anbar, a vast, mostly desert region that stretches westward from Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have united against insurgents and gangs that are ''killing people for no reason,'' said the tribal leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi.

''We held a meeting earlier and agreed to fight those who call themselves mujahadeen,'' Mr. Rishawi said in an interview. ''We believe that there is a conspiracy against our Iraqi people. Those terrorists claimed that they are fighters working on liberating Iraq, but they turned out to be killers. Now all the people are fed up and have turned against them.''

It is unclear how quickly or forcefully the tribal fighters will confront Al Qaeda and other insurgents, who mostly operate in and around the provincial capital, Ramadi, despite recurrent American military efforts to stop them. But for American and Iraqi officials, who have tried to persuade the Sunni Arab majority in Anbar to reject the insurgency and embrace Iraqi nationalism, Mr. Rishawi's comments are seen as an encouraging sign.

Word of the tribal agreement came on a day when coordinated suicide bombings rocked Kirkuk and Falluja, and graphic evidence of more sectarian killings surfaced in Baghdad.

In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city in the north bordering the autonomous Kurdish region, suicide bombers detonated four cars and one truck laden with explosives, killing more than two dozen people and wounding more than 100, Iraqi and American officials said. In Falluja, a Sunni-controlled city in Anbar, 30 miles west of Baghdad, five suicide car bombs exploded within 15 minutes, an American military official said, killing five people and wounding 23.

The police in Baghdad reported finding 36 bodies in several neighborhoods, an Interior Ministry official said. Eight were discovered in one area with gunshot wounds to the head and bearing marks of torture. But an American military spokesman said her office was aware of only 11 bodies found.

Also Sunday, the American military said a sailor with the First Marine Logistics Group died Saturday from wounds in fighting in Anbar Province.

Mr. Rishawi said the 25 tribes counted 30,000 young men armed with assault rifles who were willing to confront and kill the insurgents and criminal gangs that he blamed for damaging tribal life in Anbar, dividing members by religious sect and driving a wave of violent crime in Ramadi.

''We are in battle with the terrorists who kill Sunnis and Shiites, and we do not respect anyone between us who talks in a sectarian sense,'' said Mr. Rishawi, the leader of the Rishawi tribe, a subset of the Dulaimi tribe, the largest in Anbar. Half the Rishawi are Shiite Arabs and half are Sunni, he said.

Mr. Rishawi estimated that the insurgents had about 1,300 fighters, many of them foreigners, and are backed by other nations' intelligence services, though he declined to specify them.

On Sunday, he said the coalition of 25 tribes sent letters to the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and other top government officials to seek their support.

Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent tribal leader from Ramadi, said Sheik Khalid al-Attiya, the deputy speaker of Parliament and a Shiite, met with the tribal leaders Thursday and gave them a ''positive response.''

In addition to the government's blessing, Mr. Rishawi said, the tribes also wanted weapons, equipment and tactical help from an Iraqi Army brigade. ''The terrorists have different kinds of weapons while we have only AK-47's,'' Mr. Rishawi said. He predicted that with sufficient help, ''their force will collapse in one month.''

Ali Dabbagh, a government spokesman, said Mr. Maliki supported ''any operations that try to resist terrorism and aims to maintain security in this dear and important part from the country.''

Government officials are weighing an official response to the tribes, Mr. Dabbagh said, but there has not been any agreement to supply them. ''We are grateful to them for their desire to protect their cities,'' he said, ''and we are encouraging them.''

An American military official said tribes had fought Sunni insurgents in Anbar in the past but had never formed a united front. ''This would be the first we've seen of tribes banding together,'' said the official, who asked for anonymity because the subject was a delicate one.

Reuters quoted a man who identified himself as a senior Al Qaeda leader in northern Ramadi calling for an Islamic caliphate in Anbar and portraying tribal leaders as the enemy.

''We have the right to kill all infidels, like the police and army and all those who support them,'' said the man, who called himself Abu Farouk, Reuters reported. ''This tribal system is un-Islamic. We are proud to kill tribal leaders who are helping the Americans.''

Last month, a Marine intelligence report described Al Qaeda as an ''integral part of the social fabric'' of Anbar, and said the American military, with about 30,000 troops there, did not control vast reaches of the province, roughly the size of Louisiana.

In Kirkuk, Iraqi and American military officials said they could not immediately tell which groups were behind the suicide bomb attacks. Kirkuk has become a violent battleground between Iraqi Arabs -- Shiite and Sunni -- and Kurds who control Kirkuk's police and government.

The deadliest of the Kirkuk bomb attacks, by a truck laden with explosives that blew up between the offices of two Kurdish political parties, killed at least 18 people and wounded 55, said Lt. Col. Urhan Abdullah of the Kirkuk police. Two minutes later, a car bomb, apparently intended for a private security firm, killed two people and wounded three others, said Maj. Farhad Mahmoud of the Kirkuk police.

A third suicide car bomb detonated near an Iraqi police checkpoint about 15 miles south of Kirkuk, the police said. A fourth car bomb exploded in front of the house of Sheik Wasfi al-Asi, who had recently publicly called on the government to release Saddam Hussein, who is currently being tried on genocide charges. The house was empty, the police said, but the bomb killed two people and wounded five others.

Photo: A victim of a blast yesterday in Kirkuk. More than two dozen people were killed in coordinated attacks by suicide bombers in Kirkuk and Falluja. (Photo by Yahya Ahmed/Associated Press)

Map of Iraq highlighting Anbar: Insurgents control much of Anbar Province, a Marine report says.

Correction: September 21, 2006, Thursday
Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about an agreement by 25 tribes in Iraq's Anbar Province to fight Al Qaeda insurgents misattributed a response from one of two tribal leaders on the military strength of the tribes. The response, ''The terrorists have different kinds of weapons while we have only AK-47s,'' and that, with sufficient help, ''their force will collapse in one month,'' was from Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent tribal leader from Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, not Sheik Abdul Satttar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, leader of Rishawi tribe, a subset of the Dulaimi tribe, the largest in Anbar.